The only strategies I can think of for this task are: (and we've had 5 years to think about it )

2) Unroll the haybales towards the road. The advantage is to have the sun light shining on your back so the revealed clue will catch more light and be more likely to be spotted. It looks overcast in the promos but the brightest light still comes from the direction from where the sun is. From the promos, it looks like the sun is in the southwest shining perpendicular to the road (3pm ish).

Good luck

The unrolling towards the road sounds good if you choose bales that are already pointed that direction. Turning/spinning one of the very heavy round bales will not be possible.

The actual flight information would be unknown for arrival of KL1107 in Stockholm. Departure was 17 minutes late but it could ahve made up time. I would guesstimate arrival around 0900 for the first 3 teams. KL1109 departed a littlelate but arrived 4 minutes early at 1121am. The Saturday/Sunday schedule for the Arlanda Express train to downtown Stockholm's 20 minute ride is 5, 20, 35 and 50 after every hour, which confirms Gary's Statement that it is every 15 minutes.

Sicne the camera/sound crew has to get their equipment before teams can leave the airport, I believe the train that Sam/Dan got was 935am and the one Herb/Nate got was 950am and the one Brian/Ericka got was 1150am and the one Gary/Matt got was 1205pm.

The ferry to Grona Lund goes takes only 5 minutes from Gamla Stand to Djurgarden Island. You can also get there from Slusseen Island in 8 minutes. Which one was correct for teams to get to Grona Lund? I don't know and may not be able to get appropraite information on this.

I have a map of Djurgarden with Tivoli Grona Lund in the loswer left side of the island. The ferry route from Gamla Stan on the left side is obvious but the one form Slussen is not:

Here is a statement about the bus routes to the Silja ferry to Tallinn:The Tallink-Silja ferries arrive at Frihamnen close to central Stockholm every day from Helsinki, Turku, Tallinn and Riga. From Frihamnen you can get to the Gärdet subway station or take busses number 1, 72 or 76 to central Stockholm. More information about stops and timetables can be found on SL’s website www.sl.se.

Please look again. Do you see the words ACTUAL like for the departure time. No, you don't. That is almost surely because your source does not know that one factoid when thye do know the departure time was 712am, 17 minutes late.

Sicne the camera/sound crew has to get their equipment before teams can leave the airport, I believe the train that Sam/Dan got was 935am and the one Herb/Nate got was 950am and the one Brian/Ericka got was 1150am and the one Gary/Matt got was 1205pm.

Hey Apskip, the camera/sound crew take all their stuff into the cabin just like everybody else! No delays are incurred on their behalf.

Jf anything, the haybale roadblock this time was even more difficult, if for no other reason than they had to find TAR flags, and not clue envelopes in plastic sheaths. Those were bigger, flatter, and easier to see/feel than the flags.

What was the purpose for winning the gnomes this time? They all got to the Amazing Mat, but no explanation. And no explanation why Sam/Dan's gnome had a big red "X" on the bottom, and not the others, once the detour clue was removed.

It's time for some statistics. The average probability of a hit with 7 flags and 186 bales is 3.76% per attempt assuming that all teams left no clues in their bales. That means that it would take an average of 26.6 tries before a team found one flag. Although it could vary as flags are actually found, on average it would still stay roughly the same unless there was a "run on the bank". Sam with over 100 tries would have taken 4 times the average. Somebody has to be above average and others below average because that the way a random task works. It is hard to say how long it took to unroll each bale and get to the next one. My guess is that it was about 2 minutes per try. That means that the average time to complete would be about 53 minutes. Meghan reported 2 hours plus. Gary had 2 hours 45 minutes for his. Sam took longer than Meghan and probably longer than Matt. Maybe 3 hours? Big Easy took a short time and so did Brian.

In comparison to the AR6 Ep. 3 Lena effort, the original specs were for 20 clues in 270 bales with 9 teams. This time there were more bales and fewer clues when the number of teams were equalized. The statistics for the original ROADBLOCK were 7.4% hit rate, almost exactly twice the percentage for AR15 ep. 8. The number of bales were 30 per team originally and 37.2 for AR15. On any measure, AR15 Ep.8 was consdeirably tougher than the original.

Jf anything, the haybale roadblock this time was even more difficult, if for no other reason than they had to find TAR flags, and not clue envelopes in plastic sheaths. Those were bigger, flatter, and easier to see/feel than the flags.

What was the purpose for winning the gnomes this time? They all got to the Amazing Mat, but no explanation. And no explanation why Sam/Dan's gnome had a big red "X" on the bottom, and not the others, once the detour clue was removed.